


data will arrive

by galaxyowl



Category: Friends at the Table (Podcast)
Genre: (but like. a character study at a weirdly particular point in time), Character Study, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-16
Updated: 2019-09-16
Packaged: 2020-10-19 13:04:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 582
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20657720
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/galaxyowl/pseuds/galaxyowl
Summary: Information that is successfully transmitted from the motionless corpse lying on the floor of Privign Station to the current position ofThe Sky Reflected in Mirrors, where a half-processed body awaits an occupant.





	data will arrive

**Author's Note:**

> my piece for the twilight mirage zine!

Information that is successfully transmitted from the motionless corpse lying on the floor of Privign Station to the current position of _The Sky Reflected in Mirrors_, where a half-processed body awaits an occupant:

  1. The exact sound of the gunshot that fired a split-second before Worthy of Grace fell dead on the floor.
  2. The way the stars look from Séance on a clear night.
  3. The operating procedures for four different types of spaceships. (Information that is not transmitted: another two at least.)
  4. “If something happens to me,” Fourteen had said, “leave without me. I’ll be fine.”  
Signet eyed them a moment. “I’d prefer if we just didn’t let anything ‘happen,’” she said. “That would save all of us a lot of trouble.”  
Fourteen shrugged. “I’m just saying,” they said. “I mean, there are worse outcomes here, you know?”  
“We get it, Fourteen,” Tender said. “We know about your whole… thing. That doesn’t mean we have to like it.”
  5. The correct routes to move safely about _The Sky Reflected_—which alleyways are reliable and which stretch into unknowability late at night, which ones are full of easy places to trip and fall. The sight of the city, dim and dark and _familiar _in all its perfect strangeness.
  6. Fourteen has seen a lot of strange things but they can’t pretend to understand everythingthat they saw on Privign. Signet’s wrapped up in something that might be beyond them.
  7. The feeling of their finger pressed tight against the trigger of a gun.
  8. The first time Fourteen met Cascara she asked far too many of the right questions. She had a right to be skeptical, of course—Castlerose agents didn’t often go around getting day jobs because they felt like it.  
Fourteen wasn’t quite enough of a fool to try to hide who they were from the Beloved. In the moment they wondered whether that was the right call, but Cascara later mentioned it was their honesty that had convinced her to hire them. After all, what kind of assassination attempt would it be if everyone involved knew they were an assassin?  
Fourteen laughed in agreement, and tried not to think about why it felt like a lie.
  9. Dying is never fun and often hurts but it’s really only scary if you let it be. It’s an inconvenience at most, until it isn’t. But at that point it isn’t anything at all, so what does it matter? 
  10. Roughly half of Worthy of Grace’s musical repertoire.
  11. The sight of Sho Salon’s face, all wide-eyed admiration, all barely-concealed fear, all gentle, silent pity.
  12. The dying doesn’t scare them but sometimes the forgetting does. They said as much to Castlerose, once, as they slumped against the side of a building waiting to die after a job gone bad. “It’s not the dying that scares me,” they said. “It’s just...” They never did get a chance to finish that sentence.
  13. Tender Sky is important to them. (Information that is not transmitted: why, exactly, this was the case to begin with.) Tender Sky is important, is their coworker, is their friend—maybe, probably. Tender Sky is a riddle they haven’t yet solved. They’ve had other things on their mind.
  14. The way their hand shook the first time they killed someone. The steady firmness of it when they last gripped their weapon.
  15. The rocking of the Beloved’s ship as it moves through space, a motion with its own gentle cadence. 

Information that is not transmitted: any real notion of what the future holds.

**Author's Note:**

> i'm on twitter @confusedbluesky if you wanna come shout about fatt with me

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[podfic] data will arrive](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22837810) by [growlery](https://archiveofourown.org/users/growlery/pseuds/growlery)


End file.
